Dedicated readers might remember Swedish designer and 3D printing enthusiast Daniel Norée, who masterminded the great open-source community OpenR/C. Staying true to the principles of open-source design, he has developed some very cool 3D printable stuff: particularly very fast and sturdy R/C cars and encourages everyone to use his experience to 3D print their own.

Swedish mechanical engineer Thomas Palm, member of Norée's OpenRC Project, has recently developed a set of different 3D printed wheels and tires for Norée's cool OpenRC Truggy.

Palm's design for OpenRC Truggy includes 36 different combinations of wheels and tires that you can choose any combination to fit to your own RC vehicles. All the tires were printed in a material called Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) at 85 Shore A. "You are free to test any material but I strongly suggest the use of soft materials, I have not tested Ninjaflex yet but it will for sure be good for the tires." Palm said.

He then used 6 pcs M4x25mm screws to assemble tires and rims together. Check out the video below Palm's first test of his 3D printed snow tires.

Testing the snow tires on a beach:

As to the difference between 3D printed wheels and the standard wheels, Palm explains, "The grip with the 3D printed snow tires are awesome on the sand and more easy to steer but the torque is a bit much if you don´t like wheelies. On the other hand if drifting is your thing go with the tires with less grip. Either way - have fun!"

Palm said that the 3D printed wheels are designed for the Open RC project, but you can just download here and 3D print any of them to use on your own projects. "Designed the first sets on the plane home from Shanghai to kill some time... I did not try them all out, I hope you can do that :-)" Palm said.